System Controller for Monitoring a Characteristic System Energy of a Computing System

1. A system controller fora computing system, comprising: a machine-readable medium for storing executable instructions; a processing resource coupled to the machine-readable medium, wherein the processing resource executes the instructions to: retrieve a characteristic system energy of the computing system from a voltage regulator (VR) comprising a VR controller, one or more phase converters, and an output capacitor coupled to a load to provide an operating voltage to the load, wherein the characteristic system energy is related to a sum of capacitances comprising a capacitance of the output capacitor and a capacitance of the load and is determined by the VR controller based on a voltage at the output capacitor and a charging current or a discharging current of the output capacitor via the one or more phase converters; and determine whether to initiate a corrective action for the VR based on a comparison between the characteristic system energy and a threshold value.

2. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the computing system is a server, a storage system, a computer system, or an edge-computing device.

3. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the load comprises a compute resource.

4. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the processing resource executes the instructions to select the threshold value based on an identity of the load.

5. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the processing resource executes the instructions to: determine whether the characteristic system energy is lower than the threshold value; and initiate the corrective action in response to determining that the characteristic system energy is lower than the threshold value.

6. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein processing resource executes the instructions to generate an alert, a service request, or both, as the corrective action.

7. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein processing resource executes the instructions to operate the VR in a predefined safe mode, as the corrective action, to continue supply of power to the load from the VR.

8. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the processing resource executes the instructions to retrieve the characteristic system energy from the VR controller upon a given power transition event of the computing system.

9. The system controller of claim 8 , wherein the given power transition event is a given power-on event of the computing system, wherein the characteristic system energy is a characteristic system power-on energy measured by the VR controller during the given power-on event of the computing system, and wherein the VR controller is to: provide a power-on energy to the load by supplying the charging current to the output capacitor through the one or more of the phase converters; measure the charging current and the voltage at the output capacitor; determine an instantaneous characteristics power-on energy based on the measured charging current and the measured voltage; accumulate the instantaneous characteristics power-on energy until the measured voltage attains a power-on measurement end (POME) threshold voltage; and store the accumulated instantaneous characteristics power-on energy as the characteristic system power-on energy corresponding to the given power-on event of the computing system.

10. The system controller of claim 9 , wherein the VR controller is to switch among phase converters of the one or more phase converters to charge the output capacitor.

11. The system controller of claim 9 , wherein the VR controller is to initiate the determination of the instantaneous characteristics power-on energy and the accumulation of the instantaneous characteristics power-on energy after the measured voltage attains a power-on measurement start (POMS) threshold voltage that is lower than the POME threshold voltage.

12. The system controller of claim 8 , wherein the given power transition event is a given power-down event of the computing system, wherein the characteristic system energy is a characteristic system power-down energy measured by the VR controller during the given power-down event of the computing system, and wherein the VR controller is to: disable the one or more phase converters; enable at least one phase converter of the one or more phase converters to discharge the output capacitor by allowing a passage of the discharging current via the at least one phase converter; measure, in response to determining that the voltage of the output capacitor is lower than or equal to a power-down measurement start (PDMS) threshold voltage, the discharging current and the voltage at the output capacitor; determine an instantaneous characteristics power-down energy based on the measured discharging current and the measured voltage; accumulate the instantaneous characteristics power-down energy until the measured voltage attains a power-down measurement end (PDME) threshold voltage that is lower than the PDMS threshold voltage; store the accumulated instantaneous characteristics power-down energy as the characteristic system power-down energy corresponding to the given power-down event of the computing system; and enable rest of the one or more phase converters to allow the flow of the discharging current.

13. The system controller of claim 1 , wherein the processing resource executes the instructions to: create a log of the characteristic system energy retrieved from the VR controller the over a period; determine a trend of the characteristic system energy variation based on the log; determine that there exists an issue with the load if the trend shows an incline in a value of the characteristic system energy over a period; and determine that the output capacitor of the VR has degraded if the trend shows a decline in the value of the characteristic system energy over the period.

14. A non-transitory machine-readable medium storing instructions executable by a processing resource, the instructions comprising: instructions to retrieve a characteristic system energy of the computing system from a voltage regulator (VR) comprising a VR controller, one or more phase converters, and an output capacitor coupled to a load to provide an operating voltage to the load, wherein the characteristic system energy is determined by the VR controller based on a voltage at the output capacitor and a charging current or a discharging current of the output capacitor via the one or more phase converters; and instructions to determine whether to initiate a corrective action for the VR based on a comparison between the characteristic system energy and a threshold value.

15. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 14 , further comprising: instructions to determine whether the characteristic system energy is lower than the threshold value; and instructions to initiate the corrective action for the VR in response to determining that the characteristic system energy is lower than the threshold value.

16. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 14 , further comprising instructions to create a log of the characteristic system energy retrieved from the VR controller the over a period.

17. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 16 , further comprising: instructions to determine a trend of the characteristic system energy variation based on the log; instructions to determine that there exists an issue with the load if the trend shows an incline in the characteristic system energy over the period; and instructions to determine that the output capacitor of the VR has degraded if the trend shows a decline in the characteristic system energy over the period.

18. A method comprising: retrieving, by a system controller, a characteristic system energy of the computing system from a voltage regulator (VR) comprising a VR controller, one or more phase converters, and an output capacitor coupled to a load to provide an operating voltage to the load, wherein the characteristic system energy is related to a sum of capacitances comprising a capacitance of the output capacitor and a capacitance of the load and is determined by the VR controller based on a voltage at the output capacitor and a charging current or a discharging current of the output capacitor via the one or more phase converters; determining, by the system controller, whether to initiate a corrective action for the VR based on a comparison between the characteristic system energy and a threshold value.

19. The method of claim 18 , wherein the characteristic system energy is a characteristic system power-on energy measured by the VR controller during a given power-on event of the computing system, and wherein the method further comprising: providing a power-on energy to the load by supplying the charging current to the output capacitor through the one or more of the phase converters; measuring, in response to determining that the voltage of the output capacitor is greater than or equal to a power-on measurement start (POMS) threshold voltage, the charging current and the voltage at the output capacitor; determining an instantaneous characteristics power-on energy based on the measured current and the measured voltage; and accumulating the instantaneous characteristics power-on energy until the measured voltage attains a power-on measurement end (POME) threshold voltage; and storing the accumulated instantaneous characteristics power-on energy as the characteristic system power-on energy corresponding to the given power-on event of the computing system.

20. The method of claim 18 , wherein the characteristic system energy is a characteristic system power-down energy measured by the VR controller during a given power-down event of the computing system, and wherein the method further comprising: disabling the one or more phase converters; enabling at least one phase converter of the one or more phase converters to discharge the output capacitor by allowing a passage of the discharging current via the at least one phase converter; measuring, in response to determining that the voltage of the output capacitor is lower than or equal to a power-down measurement start (PDMS) threshold voltage, the discharging current and the voltage at the output capacitor; determining an instantaneous characteristics power-down energy based on the measured discharging current and the measured voltage; accumulating the instantaneous characteristics power-down energy until the measured voltage attains a power-down measurement end (PDME) threshold voltage that is lower than the PDMS threshold voltage; storing the accumulated instantaneous characteristics power-down energy as the characteristic system power-down energy corresponding to the given power-down event of the computing system; and enabling rest of the one or more phase converters to allow the flow of the discharging current.